In general, these conveyor systems are made up of several conveyors arranged in series, forming an omega shape for example, and driven with respect to one another at different speeds in order gradually, and in stages, to reduce the speed of travel of the stream of bottles.
The width of the active surface of each conveyor generally corresponds at least to the width of the front of bottles arriving at the pallet wrapping machine.
The bottles may either be channeled into a single lane or dispatched into several adjacent lanes.
These lanes are positioned above the surface, or baseplate, of the conveyor and are delimited by guide walls which are carried by relatively rigid appropriate structures.
In order to transfer the stream of products from one conveyor to the other, the walls of the lane or lanes act as deflectors; they are inclined with respect to the direction of travel of the bottles.
This inclination may, depending on how inclined it is and depending on the speed at which the products are moving, impose significant accelerations on the bottles and cause incidents.
Leaving aside any falling-over and/or jamming, the bottles are also subjected the phenomena of intense friction against the deflecting walls.
In the case of a multiple-lane conveyor system where there are walls that are common to two adjacent lanes, the conveying of the bottles may also be disturbed by problems of interference between said adjacent lanes. The pressure that the bottles can apply to the wall common to two adjacent lanes may cause deformation of this wall and this deformation may cause bottles to jam in the lane the width of which has been affected.
In addition, these multipath conveyors are not suited to accepting bottles of different formats. Specifically, a change in format means modifying the position of practically all of the walls, with, in addition discrepancies which all add up.